CHAPTER 81: HE DESERVE TO DIE

Her eyes moved back to Travener's face and then returned quickly to Ian's.

This time they glazed with tears as they held on his. He knew he must seem only another part of this nightmare. A figment of her strained imagination. Someone she had conjured out of the shadows with her prayers.

"It's over," he said reassuringly. "Put down the knife and come to me."

He saw the depth of the breath she drew. The strength of its movement sent a shimmer light running along the keen edge of the blade. And then another. And another.

The hand with which she had held a madman at bay, ready to plunge the knife into her own throat, began to shake. She pulled the point away, and another surge of blood spilled from the wound as the tension on the fragile skin was relieved.